Dear Colleagues,

Grain-based foods are made from various cereal grains like wheat, oats, rice, barley, rye, millet, sorghum, corn, and other cereal grains. These foods offer a rich array of essential nutrients, including carbohydrates, proteins, dietary fiber, as well as a wide spectrum of vitamins and minerals, which contribute significantly to global health maintenance. The grain-based food industry is currently under mounting pressure to innovate and produce products that incorporate healthier components, such as whole grains and dietary fiber, while reducing the presence of less-healthy elements like fats, sugars, and salt. A diet rich in whole grains and fiber has been increasingly recognized as a protective measure against the development of diet-related ailments such as cardiovascular disease, obesity, and type 2 diabetes. This underscores the need to enhance the formulation of grain foods to promote health and well-being for the world's growing population.

This Special Issue of Foods will cover recent studies carried out on the formulation optimization of grain foods. The studies may focus on understanding the physical and chemical properties of cereal grains, selecting grain types or mixtures to optimize end-product nutrition and health benefits, customizing grain-based product’s appearance and texture, partially substituting refined flour with whole grains or cereal side streams, using bioprocessing method to deliver clean-label grain foods, developing innovative whole-grain products, and grain foods reformulation with lower salt, sugar, and fat contents.

Dr. Yaqin Wang
Dr. Zhen Yang
Dr. Meng Jiang
Dr. Chenguang Zhou
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Foods is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• wholegrain
• cereal fiber
• nutrition and health
• formulation
• optimization
• bioprocessing
• fermentation
• gut microbiota
• clean label